WOMEN’S STORIES: NARRATIVES ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS AND RESILIENCE

Abstract Research has demonstrated that relationships are important in the lives of older women. Thirty-one women between the ages of 64-86 participated in interviews about their lives and relationships across the life course. In the interviews, women talked about their family of origin, friendships, romantic relationships, and their children and grandchildren. They explained how their relationships developed across the life course and how they have maintained their relationships, including how COVID-19 affected their maintenance behaviors. In the interviews, women constructed narratives that explained who they are as individuals and who they are in relationships. Through a poetic analysis of the interviews, resilience stood out as an overarching theme across the stories from women of different ages, marital statuses, economic backgrounds, and current and former occupations. Many women spoke of growing up in poor, rural areas and finding the strength to build a better life for themselves. There were stories of abuse, both in their family of origin and in chosen partners. Narratives included many instances of loss and hardships through caregiving, deaths of friends and relatives, and dissolution of relationships. Throughout it all, these women claimed resilience brought about through their own strength and determination and through relationships with people who supported them, mentored them, and built them up. This paper will discuss the many ways in which these thirty-one women exemplified resilience in their past, in their current lives, and as they looked toward their futures.

work, though they do manage their own feelings.Second, heterosexual wives overwhelmingly manipulate their feelings in attempts to gain compliance from their spouses, calm them, and/or make them happy.Finally, both gay men and lesbians perform emotion work, and they tend to combine the task-oriented and holistic approaches to care.These findings make clear that gender differences found in previous caregiving research are not "natural," and suggest that straight men's lower stress levels may result from their tendency to skip emotion work.

STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS OF SOCIAL NETWORKS AND EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING AMONG LGBT OLDER ADULTS
Anyah Prasad 1 , Jeffrey Burr 1 , Edward Miller 1 , and Karen Fredriksen-Goldsen 2 , 1. University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 2. University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States Network size and composition are structural aspects and perceived support is a functional aspect of social networks.How these social network characteristics are related to LGBT older adults' emotional wellbeing is not well understood.We investigated these relationships using data from The Caring and Aging with Pride study, a cross-sectional survey of 2,560 LGBT Americans aged 50 years and above, employing a series of mediated and moderated-mediated regression analyses.Results indicated that larger social networks were associated with more perceived support and perceived support partially mediated the association between network size and emotional wellbeing.Results also showed that stress was associated with poor emotional wellbeing via depletion of perceived support but less so when LGBT older adults were embedded in larger networks.These findings are in line with the Convoy Model of Social Relationships and The Stress Process Model; further, the results support Kondrat and colleagues' suggestion that social network size has a moderating role, while social support has a mediating role between stress and health.Also, the Theory of Homophily postulates that shared identity may enhance group cohesion and feeling supported.Accordingly, we observed that perceived support and its mediation role were stronger with LGBT and older network members compared to non-LGBT and younger network members.A larger network of non-LGBT older adults had a more direct beneficial association with LGBT older adults' emotional wellbeing.Our observations have practical implications for programs that aim to support LGBT older adults' emotional wellbeing by strengthening social support through their social networks.
romantic relationships, and their children and grandchildren.They explained how their relationships developed across the life course and how they have maintained their relationships, including how COVID-19 affected their maintenance behaviors.In the interviews, women constructed narratives that explained who they are as individuals and who they are in relationships.Through a poetic analysis of the interviews, resilience stood out as an overarching theme across the stories from women of different ages, marital statuses, economic backgrounds, and current and former occupations.Many women spoke of growing up in poor, rural areas and finding the strength to build a better life for themselves.There were stories of abuse, both in their family of origin and in chosen partners.Narratives included many instances of loss and hardships through caregiving, deaths of friends and relatives, and dissolution of relationships.Throughout it all, these women claimed resilience brought about through their own strength and determination and through relationships with people who supported them, mentored them, and built them up.This paper will discuss the many ways in which these thirty-one women exemplified resilience in their past, in their current lives, and as they looked toward their futures.

GLOBAL HEALTH AND MINORITIES ISSUES
Abstract citation ID: igad104.1735

COMPARING THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN DIABETES AND MORTALITY IN TWO INDEPENDENT BIRTH COHORT OF OLDER ADULTS IN MEXICO Brian Downer, and Jose Cabrero Castro, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, United States
The prevalence of diabetes among middle-aged and older adults in Mexico has nearly doubled since the year 2000.This increase is primarily due to healthcare reforms that promoted diabetes screening.Insulin use and other treatments have also increased during the same period.Early diagnosis and treatment can reduce diabetes mortality risk.However, it is unclear if the increased diagnosis and treatment of diabetes in Mexico have reduced the mortality risk associated with diabetes in older adults.We used the Mexican Health and Aging Study to compare the association between diabetes and 5-year mortality in two independent cohorts of adults aged 60-69 in 2001 (1932-1941) and 2012 (1943-1952).The final sample included 3,694 participants in 2001 and 4,769 in 2012.Demographic variables included age, gender, education, living in an urban community, and having health insurance coverage.Self-reported health conditions included diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and respiratory disease.We used cox-proportional hazard regression models that included an interaction term for diabetes by cohort and adjusted for demographic and self-reported health characteristics.Overall, diabetes was associated with 2.56 times higher mortality (95% CI=2.18-3.00).The 2012 cohort did not have significantly different mortality risk compared to the 2001 cohort (HR=0.91,95% CI=0.77-1.07).The association between diabetes and mortality for participants in the 2001 cohort (HR=2.52,95% CI=1.95-3.26)was not significantly different from the 2012 cohort (HR=2.58,95% CI=2.09-3.17).Our results indicate that diabetes continues to be a major risk factor for mortality in Mexico despite the increase in screening and treatment.

ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN DIET QUALITY AND COGNITION AMONG OLDER ADULTS
Isabella Arellanes, Eileen Crimmins, Jennifer Ailshire, and Jung Ki Kim, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States Research indicates an association between diet quality and cognitive outcomes.However, the association across ethnicities is not well understood.This study identifies differences in diet quality using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2015) score by ethnicity and its relationship to cognitive outcomes within ethnic groups.The sample includes 6,845 older adults from the 2014 wave of the Health and Retirement Study and nutrition data from the 2013 supplemental Health Care and Nutrition Survey.Cognitive functioning was measured based on a scale ranging from 0-27.Overall, 11% of respondents had a good quality diet, indicated by a HEI-2015 score of 81-100.Diet quality was significantly better among Hispanics than either non-Hispanic Blacks or Whites (p< 0.001 in both comparisons).Diet quality was not significantly different between Whites and Blacks (p=0.82).In a regression model controlling for age, gender, and marital status, the association between diet quality and better cognition was significant among Whites (p< 0.001) and Blacks (p< 0.05), but not significant among Hispanics (p=0.11).A one unit increase in the Healthy Eating Index is associated with a 0.05 increase in cognitive score among Whites and a 0.03 increase among Blacks.These findings suggest significant differences in diet quality across ethnicities that may impact cognition among older adults; however, the impact may differ by ethnicity.

INCONSISTENT ESTIMATES OF POOR HEALTH BETWEEN EUROPEAN SURVEYS-A MATTER OF SURVEY DESIGN?
Susanne Kelfve 1 , and Linda Enroth 2 , 1. Linköping University, Norrköping, Ostergotlands Lan, Sweden, 2. Tampere University, Tampere, Pirkanmaa, Finland Several studies have reported about inconsistencies in survey estimates on health, both within and between countries.One potential source of inconsistency in results from population surveys is survey quality.In particular, the prevalence of poor health among older people is sensitive for survey design factors and the inclusion of older people with poor health.We aimed to explore the association between survey design factors and within-country differences (between EU-SILC and SHARE) in estimated prevalence of poor health (long-term illness and global activity limitation (GALI)) among older people.The analyses include people 65 years and older from 25 European countries with data collections both in SHARE and EU-SILC 2017.Results show substantial differences in sociodemographic factors and estimates of poor health, both between and within countries.The within-country differences in the prevalence of long-term illness ranged from -18 percentage points for men in Denmark